


Frightening Faces

by MoonlightTaylor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Sam Winchester, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Kidnapping, Sam Winchester Has Powers, Witch Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:48:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21989074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonlightTaylor/pseuds/MoonlightTaylor
Summary: Everyone seems to have plans for Sam. He's supposed to be a hunter, a witch or the leader to a demon army. Sam just wants safety and a white picket fence. When he's kidnapped by witches who want to use his powers he starts to realise he might not have that choice. To get back to his family, Sam is forced down a path paved with good intentions. Destination? Hell.It takes a while, but he decides that if he's going down there anyway, it might as well be on his own terms.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 145





	Frightening Faces

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh okay. So, I've been sitting on this story literally for years but I've finally decided to just go ahead and post it. No beta, any and all mistakes are entirely mine. If you spot any errors, let me know and I'll fix them. 
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

_I'm taking back the crown, so close I can taste it, I see what's mine and take it (Panic! at the Disco: Emperor's New Clothes)_

It’s cold down here. Cold and wet. The door opens with a creak and handcuffs jingle as Sam flinches back from the light it lets in. There’s a silhouette in front of the door, and Sam thinks, absurdly, of gallows. Of medieval castles, crumbling stone corridors and hills that rise to the sound of a beating drum. The figure moves towards him, releases him from the chains that tie him to the wall and pulls him from the dark cell.

Sam fights. He pulls and struggles, kicks and bites, but it is to no avail. Because as soon as he’s free and running through the halls, he is grabbed by other figures. He’s held down until bruises blossom under his skin, dragged away despite the heels he tries to dig deeply into the stone floor. The room he’s brought to is lit in stark white LED, the bloody altar in the middle ready and waiting. For him? Sam suddenly sees himself on the hill, noose around his neck and waiting for the stool he stands upon to be kicked away.

Something heavy hits the back of Sam’s head and the ground disappears as he falls. He imagines for a moment that he breaks his neck on a rope, falling into an oblivion from which he will never have to return. He wakes up tied to the altar. Neck intact, no hills in sight.

He’s not dead. (Yet.)

The scent of herbs is overpowering. It needles its way into Sam’s nose, into his every pore and douses his mind in rosemary, angelica root and something else that he can’t quite place. Black candles are lit by his face and he almost rolls his eyes at how unimaginative they are. It’s so cliché Sam almost laughs. Then the last smell finally hits home. Liquorice root: used to control people.

Sam snarls and tries to break loose from the ropes that hold him down. Then one of the people (witches, Sam, _witches_ ) starts chanting. His mouth shuts of its own accord even when Sam tries to get it to open again with all his might. Nimble hands touch his mind, run over muscles and memories. Images appear before him. The golden face of an amulet, soft crinkles at the corners of Dad’s eyes as he laughs. A splash of green in a familiar face, a deep, whiskey-soaked rumble at the end of a rough day.

 _It’s okay,_ the fingers whisper as if they have a voice, _just stop fighting and everything will be okay._

A stab of something runs through Sam’s chest, bursts flesh and follows down in a fiery line. Blood wells up in the hole, overflows, runs over cold skin and hurts to the bone. The faces in Sam’s mind come closer, blur, converge. Blue trucker-caps fly like Frisbees through salvage yards as he follows them with a dog. Dean’s cocky voice yells after him as the purr of a black muscle car alerts him to his father’s presence.

The pain in his chest forms a circle, a figure, a drawing of bloody finger paint. It would be easy to ignore it, to sink into the depths of memories and forget. To forget dark cells and empty corridors. To forget the power-hungry faces that surround him. To forget the life he was pulled from (the life that has doomed him).

Images flash faster, disorienting, burning through his retina as if they’re right in front of him. Guns and knives and burning wives. Midnight black shining from greedy eyes. Transparent echoes of the dead. Normal he can never have. Freak, weird, wrong.

 _You, fight, Sammy! Until your dying breath, you fight!_ Dean yells in his mind, volume twice as high as those soft, soothing hands that caress his brain like a lover. Sam has never been one to give up. He has also never been one to deny Dean.

So, he pushes against the hands. Against the whispering voice that lures him into oblivion like a softly blinking will’o’whisp in the fog. The pain gets stronger the further he gets from those hands. He grits his teeth against the pain that engulfs him now, reaches out to it and pulls it towards him like a shield. Breathe through the pain. Use the pain.

There are surprised mutters from the witches when he opens his eyes, when he gasps a strangled denial through ever closing lips. Then they chant louder. The cool hands in his mind grow colder. They grip tighter to his memories, try to drown him in a sea of long-forgotten times. _No!_ His mind roars. It’s been his favourite word since he was two.

The flames on the candles grow higher, then blow out in an impossible wind. Smoke flows from the wick, twisting in the air like dancers in the dark. Sam is released and pulled from the altar. He still can’t stand, still can’t speak. Rough hands hold him up, drag him to through the halls, sock-puppet-limp. He wants to struggle when he sees he’s being brought back to the cell, but he can’t. Even words of protest fail him.

A witch grabs his throat and hisses a foul breath in his ear, “We will break you yet.”

Sam disagrees. He won’t give these people the satisfaction. 

* * *

At night Sam is visited by a man with yellow eyes who whispers sweet nothings in his ears. The man promises things, a way out, a way to greatness. Sam doesn’t listen. Even if all he’s ever wanted is a way out, he has never craved greatness. No, it’s normalcy he craves. Besides, he’s supposed to trust the yellow-eyed man who visits him in his cell but never makes a move to free him?

It’s still better than the days, when he’s pulled out of his cell and tied to the altar. When he’s fed drink after drink of filth. When strange languages are whispered over his prone body. He sees things. Death mostly. His brain explodes every time and when he opens his eyes he sees flashes of static images, shifting melting, turning to reality. The people in them always die. They’re beheaded, electrocuted, gutted.

Then one day, a pretty blonde girl burns on the ceiling, screaming his name.

That night, the yellow-eyed man visits. He prowls the cell like a tiger closing in on its prey, smiles coldly into the burning darkness. The temperature drops as the man moves closer and crouches before Sam. He wipes Sam’s hair back with a soft hand and an eerie leer crosses his face. Sam thinks it is probably supposed to be a smile.

“They’re visions, these images you see. Predictions. You can see people die before even Death knows that it’ll happen,” The man coos, frustratingly paternal in his movements, “It’s a gift, Sammy-boy.”

Sam doesn’t answer, he clenches his jaw, thinks about all the people he could have saved with his knowledge. All the lives he could have spared. Cold stone digs into his back, welcomes him like the cool hands in his mind not so long ago. Sam hasn’t stopped burning from the inside out since that first day. Burning, like that girl on the ceiling.

“You want to know who the girl is.” It’s not a question, so Sam doesn’t answer, “If you continue on this path of life, she’ll be your lover. And she’ll die because of you.”

There’s no doubt in Sam’s heart about that. The ones he loves tend to suffer. Death has followed him from a very young age. Still, the thought of this beautiful girl dying like his mother, burning with his name on her lips, it’s… unpleasant. It hurts.

“I can get you out of here, Sammy. I can help you understand these wonderful gifts you have been given. All you need to do is ask,” The man whispers, yellow eyes gleaming like embers in the dark.

Sam never asks.

* * *

Some days the chains are loosened and Sam is led to a library instead of the altar in that bare, frightening room. The smell of books is thick in the air; musty, dusty, filled with the vanilla aroma of the glue that holds the pages together. They’re leather-bound, usually and sometimes the parchment inside is so clearly made of human skin that bile rises to Sam’s throat.

He doesn’t mind those days, though, those days immersed in spell-books and learning. He brands the words into his mind. Latin, Celtic, Sumerian, Hindi, Vodoun… The words hold no meaning at first, but the witches whisper the meanings in his ears and at night he dreams the colours of the spells, flashing past like fireworks. Purple, yellow, deep blood red. Sam remembers them and holds them close. Who knows what he can use to get out of here some day?

Soon, the days turn to lessons. The witches teach Sam how to use the words he learnt, teach him what herbs to use, what cadence of voice. Spells are whispered and chanted, sigils drawn with his own blood on his skin. Flames lick the outskirts of Sam’s mind. _Learn_ , they urge, _can’t you feel the power in what they’re showing you? Learn it. Use it._

Sam does. 

“There’s power in blood, Samuel,” the eldest tells him one day, as she lays macabre tarot cards out before him, “And your blood is the most powerful this world has ever seen.”

A knife is thrust into his hand, expectant gazes cast upon him. He cuts into his skin, lets blood flow down on the cards. The words come automatically, branded in his mind, set loose on his reluctant tongue. He doesn’t want to turn into this; a man using witchcraft. Still, he craves the power, needs it escape from the witches’ magical hold.

The cards shiver on the ground, shake themselves, burn at the edges, twisting and turning up in smoke. Four cards remain unburnt. They group themselves in twos, overlapping. The first two cards face Sam, lying open. One shows a woman riding a lion, the other a heralding angel. Strength and Judgement, he knows. They stand for power in its rawest form and longstanding plans finally coming to fruition.

For a moment the world tilts and he sees himself in a dark and burning place, eyes black as he chokes the life out of a man hundreds of miles away.

The other two cards face away from him, pointing accusingly at the witches, whose faces have gone terribly pale. Curious, Sam cranes his neck to see what he has predicted. A skeletal horseman, banner raised, stares up from one card; the other portrays a tower falling, struck by lightning and irreparably broken. Death and the Tower. Sam smiles at the prediction of conflict and death.

A vision strikes, of burning corridors and high-pitched screams, of witches bleeding out against walls and burning on ceilings as the halls turn red with dank and sticky blood. Jasmine wafts powerfully between the walls, perverting the already sickeningly sweet smell of rotting flesh.

Opening his eyes, Sam finds the witches looking at him. He sees, suddenly, a fifth card, bent and twisted. It’s caught between the metal that chains his hands together, the back soaked thoroughly in blood. Sam wrenches it out and unfolds its damaged edges.

Ripped and burnt, staring at Sam, is the Magician. It has been altered. The man used to be stood over a table, right hand raising a staff above his head. On the table were a sword, a goblet and a pentacle. Now, the raised staff has turned to a knife, the goblet filled inexplicably with blood, and the sword… The sword hangs out of the magician’s very dead body, pinning the pentacle against his chest in a show of force.

“I don’t think you are all going to be alive much longer,” Sam tells the witches.

When they look at each other uncomfortably, he smiles a gleeful smile.

* * *

Sam dreams of a crossroads, of a checkered box filled with so much power, it makes Sam’s indifferent heart ache. There’s a picture in the box. A driver’s license; fake.

It reads _Dean Winchester_. Issued in Little Rock, Arkansas, but the road, the crossing, is not there. It’s in another city. Another state, even. Sam can feel it down to his deepest bones: they rattle in their bedding at the implications of that little box.

A crossroads means a deal. A deal is never good.

Suddenly the scene twists and flickers. A man appears in the midst of the mayhem. He has yellow eyes. For a moment, they meet Sam’s, turn towards him in a way they shouldn’t be able to.

“Good-bye, Samuel,” he says and the world tilts before Sam is thrust into a place of burning white walls and piercing blue light. He flinches back from the light, from the loud whistle that permeates the air and shakes his eardrums to oblivion. It lasts forever, sears out the entire dream he just saw.

When Sam opens his eyes he is surrounded by silent darkness. The door at the end creaks open, the manacles fall loudly from his wrists. No one comes to grab him and pull him to the next cell. No one holds him against the wall with some obscure, powerful words. There’s just an open door, full of light.

Walking carefully, bare feet slapping the ground so softly they barely make a sound, Sam makes his way to the door. The hall is empty, lit with fluorescent lights that remind him a little too much of the light in his dream. But there’s no one keeping him here. No one at all.

For a moment Sam allows himself to wonder. Is he finally free?

Suddenly, a loud scream echoes through the halls, and Sam stands nailed to the floor, instincts warring with each other. Fight or flight? Dad always taught him to fight. Sam’s nature tells him to run.

Curiosity is stronger than both, apparently, because before he knows it, Sam is edging towards the corner of the hall. He keeps close to the left side, fingers sliding over white bricks as his other hand balls to a fist. He cautiously looks around the corner.

What greets him is a scene straight from a nightmare. Literally. Sam remembers seeing this, remembers a ruined tarot card that imprinted a vision into his mind. The witches lie dying against the walls, blood pooling terribly at their feet. The harsh, clinical lights flicker on and off, the buzzing of electricity echoes ominously against the walls.

The air smells of jasmine and death.

It’s a terrible sight. It’s a wonderful sight. Sam hates himself for feeling the latter but he can’t help it, can’t help the relief that floods him at the sight of his freedom. Just when he’s about to step into the hall – walk over the bloody floor like a morbid Christ – the lights surge off. When they turn back on the yellow eyed man stands before Sam. His smile is a massacre of its own.

“Hey there, Sammy-boy,” he lilts, “Where do you think you’re going?”

Sam remains silent. He’s never said anything to this apparition of the night, never done anything but stare right into those hateful yellow eyes. The man cocks his head with a grin and takes a deliberate step forward. Sam can’t quite help flinching back.

“I’ve noticed you’re not a man of many words, and so… defiant,” the man whispers, somewhere between proud and amused.

He nimbly sidesteps the bodies on the floor. Each footfall sends a surge of electricity through the air. At times, Sam swears he can see echoes of the witches around him; flashes of their last moment, a snapshot of a plane he can’t even begin to fathom. He’s open to those kind of things now – mind and soul.

Freedom is just around the corner, just out the door but it’s blocked by this man. By this _thing_. This powerful being that slips through reality with blood on his hands and chaos in his eyes. They’re close enough to touch now.

“Christo,” breathes Sam. A flinch contorts the face across him and one of the corners of Sam’s mouth lifts humourlessly.

“Such language.” The demon tuts and waves a hand that sucks the air right from Sam’s lungs. Another wave and the whole world spins into nothing.

* * *

A dungeon to a cellar, frying pan to fire. There are new chains here, invisible, nonphysical, made from sulphur and fire and demon blood. It’s dark and light at the same time here, shadows so deep they become solid blocks, living things, eyes that watch him in the night. Sometimes the demon comes in to observe him, yellow glinting in the gloom.

“You’re my favourite, you know,” the demon says, “So full of power and anger and hate. The perfect formula for a leader.”

Sam remains silent. He’s heard this before. This demon isn’t the first to want to turn him into a tool for their fight. Dad wanted a soldier, the witches a weapon. It’s only a matter of time before Sam finds out what the demon wants him for.

“Those witches played with you quite a bit, didn’t they? They opened some parts of your mind even my powers can’t access. You’re much further along than your brothers and sisters.”

At the word ‘brother’ Sam’s head snaps up. Fear gallops through him at the thought of his brother in a cell like this one. Though Sam has long given up on the idea of being saved, there’s a little shard of something still in his heart, brittle and waning. Something between defiance and hope, it’s the only thing keeping him halfway sane.

“My brother?” Sam asks, voice barely a croak in the dark. He hasn’t spoken in so long that he’s almost forgotten how to use his tongue. The demon cocks his head curiously, as if scrutinising a particularly strange experiment.

“Yes, but not the one you’re thinking of.” A wave of the hand and Sam feels invisible bindings being released. He stumbles, tries to punch the demon but ends up face down on the ground with a breath of sulphur whipping past his ear. There’s a sweet whisper, “Now, now, Sammy-boy. I’d think real hard before you try something like that again.”

Blood soaked halls dance Sam’s mind’s eye and he wonders (doesn’t want to know) how powerful this thing is if it managed to kill all those witches. Hundreds of spells run through his mind but he thinks better of it. He breathes, deep and steady, pushes his fear down where it can fester and boil. Now is not the time.

* * *

The basement door creeps open and Sam can feel invisible chains retreating, slinking off his wrists and neck like snakes. Light floods in, warm and yellow, nothing like the stark LED in the witches’ dungeons. He blinks against it for a moment, hesitating on the spot. All of this feels like some fucked up experiment, like he’s a rat in a cage and there are tests lined up for him outside that door. He’s suddenly hit by the horrifying thought that maybe those animals know exactly what they’re heading into: uncertainty, pain, death. But it’s better than just standing still and waiting for it to come to him.

So, he steps forward with slow, echoing treads.

A large metal room greets him on the other side, with naked bulbs on the ceiling and something on the floor that looks suspiciously like blood. It’s empty, but Sam knows he’s being watched. Another step away from the door, hackles raised, mind spinning with spells and hunting and a terror so deep it takes his breath away.

Something changes in the room, then. Sam feels it before he sees the lights flickering, before he hears a throaty chuckle behind his back. It’s like something cold and black has crept up into the space around him, slick and slimy and far, far too old to still be moving.

He turns, swallowing down the fear, the anger, the physical reactions of _disgust_ that creep their way up his spine. He thinks of Dean’s face on their last witch hunt, when they unearthed a putrid alter decorated in animal bones. Good to know he’s finally found something grosser than witches.

It’s the yellow-eyed man, of course: big smile, white teeth and a gaze that cuts through Sam far more effectively than he would like to admit. He clenches his jaw and returns the gaze.

“Sammy!” the demon greets, “Welcome to my little arena, I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”

For a moment, Sam debates saying nothing, sinking back into the silence that used to drive the witches insane. But there’s something about this demon. Something knowing, something _familiar_ , like he’s intrinsically intertwined with Sam’s fate. Like the knows exactly what Sam is going to do before he even knows it.

It’s terrifying.

“I think the room could use a little redecorating.” Dean would be proud of that answer. The demon seems more amused than anything, and the chuckle it lets out is so grating it sends shivers down Sam’s spine. 

Yellow-Eyes says, “Yes, one of your sisters left that blood behind. So rude of her not to clean up after herself, though I do suppose that’s difficult when you’re dead.”

Sisters. Again, with these sibling Sam has never met. He wonders if she was just some girl plucked out of danger like he was, only to be thrown into something much worse.

“I hope you’ll do a better job,” the demon says, before snapping his fingers.

A sudden chill permeates the air. Breath fogs in front of Sam. The air crackles with a new presence. Sams turns on the spot, the same, deeply ingrained hunter’s instinct that keeps him facing demon forcing him to take scope of the situation. His Dad speaks to him through a long-forgotten memory, tone patient but brooking no argument. _Cold spot, the feeling of being watched. You know this one Sammy._

“Ghost,” Sam mutters, before turning back to the demon, “You’re just gonna lock me in here with it? It’ll kill me!”

“Not if you kill it first.”

“How? I don’t have any weapons.”

The demon steps forward, and Sam steps back automatically. It reaches out to him with one finger, tapping it lightly against his head. It takes all of his restraint not to flinch away.

“All the weapons you need are right in there.”

Then he disappears, leaving Sam alone again. Well, not entirely alone.

If he looks hard enough through the mist, Sam knows he’ll be able to sense her echo. Her, the other girl, the sister the demon keeps mentioning She’s moved on, but time and space can bend if push them hard enough. If you push yourself hard enough. There are all kinds of things he wants to ask her: if she knew, if it was hard just letting go.

He doesn’t push though, doesn’t have the time. Around him the world is misty white, lightbulbs glowing through the mist like strange UFOs. Somewhere, the spirit is laughing. Somewhere, it’s stalking its prey.

So, this is how it ends then. This is how Sam Winchester dies. He survived torture and witches and demons, and he’s about to find his send at the hand of a dead guy who just couldn’t let go.

In that moment, something rises inside him, searing hot and electric. He’s not going to die here, not going to be the next bloodstain in this cellar for the next of the demon’s experiments to find. In that moment, he doesn’t care that he’s probably playing right into the demon’s hands by fighting, he doesn’t care that using the rabid, burning power inside him might make him more monster than human.

This life, this mind, this body; it’s all he has, all he _is_. And he’s not losing any of it on somebody else's terms.

Sam backs up against the wall and does what he does best: he thinks. Latin flows over his mind like a soothing balm. Light melodic words, black ink on human-leather skin.

Then the ghost is upon him, dripping wet and marshy, with giant, gaping holes where its eyes should have been. It grabs onto him, grips him in cold white mist that breaks through skin and lips and right into his mind until all he sees is white.

But there’s still that litany, still that Latin, still the burning rage that roiled up somewhere between the altar and tarot cards. The echo of the spirit starts taking form in his mind, grey, lonely, angry. He closes his eyes; he’s not looking with them anyway.

He thinks of fire. Of Mom on the ceiling, of campfires in lonely backwoods where Dad just burnt a wendigo to a crisp, of flames over which witches cook their spells and fireworks so bright they burn the whole field down. He imagines the spirit in those fires, plucks it from this reality into his own.

Sam thinks hard enough for his head to burst, for fire to burn him from the inside out. He thinks so hard that blood drips from his nose, through his lips and metallic onto his tongue. Suddenly, the cold dissipates, replaced by searing heat. A scream rents the air. Sam opens his eyes and watches the ghost burst into flames.

The mist is gone. Now there is just the bulbs, swinging naked from the ceiling. Before the fear of what he’s just done can set in, Sam is met by two burning yellow eyes and then the world dissolves to nothing.

* * *

For the most part, Sam is left in the dark. Alone, with only the company of is own damning thoughts. Loneliness is always a good breeding grown for evil and this place is no exception. He can feel it growing in him: something hot and angry that wants to tear the world apart for what it has put him through.

Sometimes the door will open and he’ll step out against his better judgement. Without fail there will be a monster and he’ll have to face it, weaponless. It’s all just a test, he knows. It’s the demon experimenting, trying to find his limits.

Every time Sam decides he’s tired of the games, the demon finds new ways to make Sam play along. He threatens to hurt Sam, to kill innocent bystanders, to force Sam to burn everything he loves. It works once, maybe twice, but everyone has a breaking point, and Sam has long passed his. The next time the demon threatens him, Sam just stares him down.

“Do it then,” he says, “See if I care.”

The demon smiles, “Oh, but I do have something you care about.”

Sam raises his brows, “And what’s that?”

“Your brother.”

A sickle of a smile passes over Sam’s lips, “You don’t have the kind of juice to get to my brother.”

“I don’t need to get to him, I already have him.”

When the demon shows Sam the contract with Dean’s name on it, the whole world seems to thunder. The thought of his brother in Hell makes Sam rip at his chains, rabid; eyes wet, scream raw. Then, half a moment later, a strange, simmering calm comes over him. He relaxes in his chains. There is a manic look in his eyes when his gaze meets the demons.

“It’s a five-year contract, Sammy-boy. But I don’t mind bending the rules and sending him down a bit early if you don’t cooperate.”

Sam looks into yellow eyes and thinks of the spirit he tore apart with his mind, hears Dean’s voice in the back of his head.

_Demons are just ghosts with an ego._

“I’m going to kill you all,” Sam says and flashes a rabid smile.

* * *

The path to success paved with blood. Or so the demon says. Unlike the witches, he knows which buttons to push. He holds Dean’s soul over Sam like a macabre carrot, the sword of Damocles waiting to fall on his brother’s head. So, reluctantly, Sam complies.

The demon teaches him to move things with this mind. To worm his way into other’s thoughts, to send bright bursts of electricity coursing through his fingertips. Sam learns to whisper through the blood of humans, to move things with the blink of an eye, to feel the turning of the earth beneath him and to angle himself so jump from place to place with ease.

He learns it all in invisible shackles, some demonic and some deeper, bound by the demon’s promise not to take Dean as long as he cooperates.

Sam learns to be a demon without becoming one. He feels his soul blacken with everything he does. Every word, every thought, every silent kill chips at his humanity.

For Dean, he does it gladly. For Dean, he’d walk straight into hell.

(And maybe he’s doing that, slowly, backwards, with a gun to his head.)

* * *

A rusty red desert greets Sam. Sun and sand and tumbleweeds. In the distance sits a pale house, cracking in the heat. Everything feels dead here, and not in the way it should. There’s a cloying sense of rot, of ripe corpse and a tangy taste of sulphur in the air. If it weren’t for the chains keeping him tied to the demon, Sam would have flown out of here in an instant.

“Let’s walk the rest of the way,” the demon says and it sounds ominous.

On the porch there’s an old lady, shrunken like a raisin, knitting a sweater out of entrails and bones. She glances up and her eyes shimmer black through a pair of thick glasses.

“I was wondering when you’d grace me with a visit,” she croaks.

Sam remembers just enough from his hunting years to recognise a kitsune when he sees one. Right now, he’s staring one in the eye. The kitsune is an ancient being of chaos and strife, a demon-fox with eyes like death and a pale agonising emptiness pulsing from her many tails. The air tastes like maggots when she speaks and her breath is electric on Sam’s skin.

Even in her crumpled old meatsuit, she emanates power. It’s enough to make even a Knight of Hell uncomfortable. Azazel nods his head at the creature with a wry smile, and her face splits open like a wound, maggots dropping like blood from her mouth.

The sight of that smile awakens something in Sam. A long-lost hunter’s instinct, still stronger than the sulphur in his blood. This isn’t the face of an ally. This isn’t even the face of an enemy. What stares at them from beneath the sagging skin is sheer insanity. No plans, no future, just pure unadulterated chaos.

It takes one look from the kitsune to bring that same chaos bubbling up in Sam; a white-hot fire that’s been seething under his skin for years. It flows through his veins like a virus, taking hold wherever it can.

Sam knows with a sudden certainty that the time has come. This is the beginning of the end.

“Azazel,” thunders the unearthly voice from between the woman’s broken lips, “And a boy named Thunder.”

The demon’s eyes flicker between Sam and the kitsune suspiciously. Perhaps it’s the mention of his name: this is the first time Sam has heard it. Names can be powerful things.

Or, perhaps Azazel can also feel the energy pulsing between them, the twisted connection - ancient and young, chaos and fire. Before he can say a word, the kitsune speaks again and Sam can’t help but stare at her, intoxicated by the insanity. Where the kitsune is empty and dead, Sam is filled to the brim with power. They’re magnets - positive and negative being pulled ever together.

“I know why you’re here. But I’ve told you before, I have no interest in your crusade.”

The words slip through the air like syrup, thick and rotten. On the porch, the temperature drops a few degrees and the salesman’s smirk on Azazel’s face grows just a little colder. Sam can’t keep his own smirk from growing.

“The boy, however,” the kitsune considers as she eyes Sam, “I can always appreciate power.”

“I thought you might like him,” is the demon’s answer. There’s something of a glint behind the yellow of his eyes, smug that the kitsune has interest in his newest commodity. 

Sam can’t help but think Azazel is misunderstanding the creature’s interest. In her eyes, he isn’t a gift from a demon. He is a dangerous power, and Little Miss Chaos would just love to see it unleashed. Upon the world, upon Heaven or Hell. She just wants to watch something burn. 

A single fly detaches itself from the kitsune’s filthy aura. Azazel is still saying something, but Sam can’t keep his eyes off the fly. It buzzes lazy circles into the sky, brittle wings carrying it ever closer towards him. Slowly, it lands on his hand. Immediately, he feels the hollowness of it, carving into the electricity under his skin. It feels almost as if it’s whispering to him.

_Let me help you unleash yourself._

As the kitsune starts to speak again, Sam watches the fly burrow into his skin.

“I’ll be seeing you again,” the kitsune croaks.

Then she throws back her head, opens her mouth and lets out a horrifying, primal screech. A swarm of flies erupts from her every orifice, flying up into the sky in a streak of the deepest black. The body she inhabited crumples in on itself: a puppet without strings. Maggots appear seemingly out of nowhere, crawling over her in wild abandon. Before their eyes, she pales and shrinks and ripens into something no one wants to look at, a year's worth of decomposition happening in a matter of seconds.

Sam spares a single thought to the old soul that used to inhabit her body. He can see echoes of her all over the house, feel her loneliness seeping through the floorboards. But that fly is still buzzing, electric under his skin and he can’t quite rip away from the wildness long enough to care.

* * *

“Why would I listen to you?” Sam growls. He’s toe to toe with the demon now, face to face. The other special kids, with their fledgling powers stand around the edges. They hold their breath, bide their time, waiting for the nuclear reactor that his Sam to explode.

Azazel is calm. His eyes shimmer, his breath freezes in the air. “You need me,” he says.

“What I _need_ is my family,” Sam spits, all blood and rage and burning fire.

“This is your family,” Azazel intones, “Your real family.”

Something rises inside Sam when he hears that, dark and dangerous. A shadow that yearns to rip and tear at the thing in front of him. He looks at the kids standing against the walls, some cowering, some full of glee at the chaos and violence before them.

This is not his family, and he needs to return to those who are. There’s no way to leave. Azazel is stronger than him, stronger than furious the shadow in Sam’s soul.

But he won’t be forever.

There’s still that fly under his skin. He wonders how to let it out.

* * *

It’s a crispy cold February morning when some idiot demon decides it’s got a death wish. It strolls up to Sam and comes to a stop barely a foot away. Sam can smell trouble and sulphur in its wake. He wonders when he stopped thinking those two were the same thing.

“So, have you heard yet?” it asks. Sam doesn’t reply. A terrible grin breaks open a pretty, girlish face. “You haven’t heard, have you? Well, isn’t that just perfect.”

“Either get to the point, or go to hell,” Sam says. He’s tired of the killing, tired of demons and sulphur and siblings-but-not-really who take to it all with far too much abandon. He’s tired of being calm, of keeping the fire in his head and the fly under his skin. Today isn’t a good day to be playing games with him.

“Funny you should mention that,” the demon says, leaning over the table towards Sam, “See, your brother’s deal came due today. I hear the screamed when the hellhounds came. I hear he –“

If the demon says anything else, Sam can’t hear it. All he hears is buzzing, all he feels is the fly under his skin. He grabs the demon’s shirt collar and pulls it close. The invisible bonds around his wrists are starting to show as fiery golden rings that keep his powers in check.

“Say that again.” He growls over the buzzing in his head that’s going louder and louder. Everything inside him itches, crawls like a thousand bugs under his skin. The bonds grow brighter, brighter, until they’re reflected in the black of the demon’s eyes.

Sam can feel terror rolling off the thing. Can feel the rage that’s been growing inside him for so long crash against the bindings that hold him together until they reach a crescendo and which a loud _snap_ break free. The room grows instantly hot, stuffy, stifling.

“Say. That. Again.”

The demon tries to pull back but it is powerless in Sam’s grip. For a few seconds, it struggles, then it seems to realise escaping is a lost cause. The face turns menacing.

“I said: ‘Your brother is in hell’. Idiot sold his soul but didn’t bother to read the fine print. He was begging for us to free you but he never said what we were supposed to do with you after that. I hear even his last days were only spent looking for you.”

That’s enough. If Azazel isn’t going to keep up his end of the bargain, then Sam is definitely not keeping his. The thought of Dean in Hell, in the bloody pit that created that monsters before him, alone and forever, is enough to send Sam spiralling.

He closes his eyes, feels the fire burning inside him. He pictures those around him, the slimy black demons, the darkening souls of his human brothers and sisters and he sees them, he sees it all. Then he turns them off. It’s a simple as turning out a light and twice as fast.

When Sam opens his eyes again, he’s surrounded by bodies. He barely spares them a second glance. All he can think is that Dean would have had a witty one-liner to follow all this death up with.

Something like, “See you in Hell.”

But he isn’t Dean. He’s quiet. And he’s powerful, and he’s absolutely fucking done.

Sam walks out the door and takes a deep breath. A stiff breeze whips his hair from his face and for the first time in years, it doesn’t taste like sulphur.

* * *

Sam steals a map and a deck of cards from the local Gas’n’Sip. He lays the map on the ground before him and lays out the cards one by one. Red, black, red, black. A drop of blood, some whispered words and the cards start shaking. They crumble under his hands, disintegrate and flow over the map in black, oozing blood. A black line runs from Sam’s location to a small town in South Dakota.

A small smile, sharp as a knife and he disappears into thin air.

* * *

The motel room is dark when Sam enters, the only lights come from the blinking laptop and the open bathroom door. From the corner of the table there is movement, a dark lump that jumps to action as the salt-line is crossed. A shot goes off, and Sam brushes the bullet from the air with a lazy wave of his hand. It drops to the ground with a soft _plop_.

“That isn’t exactly enough to kill me anymore, Dad.” Sam whispers as he reaches behind him to flick the light switch.

John Winchester makes for a pitiful appearance under the swaying bulb above the table. He’s haggard and bowed, with lines in his face that weren’t there when Sam last saw him. Salt and pepper hair has turned irreversibly grey and the scruffy beard isn’t doing much better. He looks old, with his dull eyes and his slumped posture. It’s the look of a man who has lost too much and is using what is left of his meagre hope to gain back at least a semblance of his life.

“Sam?” he asks incredulously as his son eases back long, brown locks. It looks like he has half a mind to pull off another shot, before realising that he couldn’t look into those hazel eyes and pull the trigger. They will have to turn black before that happens. Sam doesn’t grace the man with conversation.

Instead, he gets straight to the point.

“Dean is in hell.” John blinks. Sam doesn’t. “And I’m going to get him back.”

* * *

The Impala feels empty without Dean in the driver’s seat. John drives in silence occasionally shooting his son unreadable looks. Sam knows his presence is probably all kinds of confusing for his father, but with Dean depending on him, he doesn’t really care. Idly, he traces his hands over the windowsill he used to fall asleep against almost every day. She seems smaller, somehow. His legs have outgrown the space between the front seat and the dashboard, but it’s more than that. The car frame, the roof, the road… He feels too big for the confining boxes in which hunters live their life.

Singer Salvage is exactly as he left it all those years ago: a concrete yard littered with the scrap metal of other people’s lives. When they knock on the door they get shotgun in their face for their efforts. There are tears in Bobby’s eyes and he tugs Sam in a hug so tight he feels his ribs groan.

It’s all so achingly familiar. And yet. It barely feels like it’s his anymore.

* * *

“They never stopped looking, you know,” Bobby says later, when they’re settled around the kitchen table, pouring through lore on Hell. Sam tracks the new wrinkles in his face with his eyes.

“I know. But I stopped expecting them to save me a long time ago.” Sam answers.

* * *

“’S far as I can tell the only thing that can grab a soul from hell is an angel,” Bobby says from behind a big stack of books, “And no offense to you or your soul, Sam, but you ain’t exactly angelic.”

Sam answers with a cryptic, “We’ll see.”

“I’ll need a bit more than that, boy.”

“You want a plan? Here it is: I go to hell, I kill the bitch who holds Dean’s contract and then I make sure no demon can ever deal again. 

“You’re just gonna stroll into hell, then?”

Sam looks into sceptic eyes with a steady gaze. A smile twists his lips. Bobby’s a smart man, and Sam’s missed his straightforward presence in his life. But Bobby’s a hunter and he thinks like one. John too.

“Getting into hell isn’t the problem,” Sam, “It’s getting out that might give us trouble.”

“What do you have in mind?” John asks, it’s the first thing he’s said in days.

“I think you know, already,” says Sam, “Does the name Daniel Elkins mean anything to you?”

John blanches.

* * *

The Colt fits perfectly in Sam’s hand and when he crosses the iron train tracks leading to the Devil’s Gate, he wonders, for a second, if he’ll even be able to cross. How far from human has he strayed? Luckily though, he doesn’t even feel it.

Click, clack. The gears move and move and boom. Open they go. Millions of souls are massing against the gate, but it they’ve come prepared. One of the iron train tracks is pushed against the door. Clouds of angry buzzing black bang against it, clamouring to get out.

Dean’s not that far yet, not according to the cards Sam read this morning. He should still be able to cross. And if he can’t, well, a couple hundred demons on Earth is a small price for his brother’s soul. Sam takes a deep breath, pulls the rage he put on the back burner for the sake of his family back to the forefront. He turns one last time and gives both his fathers a nod.

“Take care of Dean,” he says.

Bobby shakes his head, “Don’t worry about that, you just come back, you hear?”

John looks him in the eyes, “You sure about this?”

Sam just smiles. “They wanted me so bad, well, they’re going to fucking have me.”

Then he turns back and takes his last step into hell. No turning back now.

* * *

Everyone is always trying to change him, to morph him to their needs. Sam refuses. He was not a hunter, despite his father’s wishes. He was not the witches’ plaything. And he is not Azazel’s lapdog. He never will be. Sam is Sam. And Sam has the power to prove that now.

Yes, Sam will break before he bends, and he will never bow. Certainly not to a pompous demon who calls himself ‘King’.

Sam wages a war on hell such as it has never seen. He slaughters demons left and right, murders with the blink of an eye and anything or anyone that stands in his way is razed to the ground. When he crosses Lilith he brings her to ashes with a lazy smile and a wave of his hand. White light pounds from every orifice of hell and contracts go up in flames as well-kissed lips burn to a crisp.

“Dean.” Sam croaks and his brother’s soul appears before him. Broken, bloody, still filled with pain. Sam tells him, “You are free. Crawl from this place and find the life you need to lead.”

The look on Dean’s face says he wants to argue. The bloody knife in his hand says that he can’t. Dean climbs out of hell one inch at a time and wonders why the demon he just met looked so eerily familiar.

Hell grows colder as Sam goes deeper. Icicles cling to torches as frozen chains bind unfortunate souls to their heavy racks. The souls are more viscous here, more pathetic, too. Child molesters, murderers, leaders who have condemned millions to a painful death. They shiver in the cold halls, sucking on drops of their own frozen blood.

The ice melts in the presence of Sam’s rage. His anger has always burnt like a crazed fire.

* * *

Azazel has always burnt cold like the devil he so worships. His fires are warm. His electrical flares are hot, but his presence, his fury, has always been frosty. Sam burns hot. His rage flares out like fire, like a stuffy warm day in the rain, like sand cracking under lightning, melting into perfectly fused glass. Sam’s anger can raise the temperature in the room by ten degrees. His mind burns souls from their vessels like it has never done anything else in life.

With a grip like fire and eyes like shimmering charcoal, Sam grips Azazel’s icy soul. He melts it, sets it aflame with a hot breath of rage.

He whispers into the demon’s burning soul, “You made me a king, now I’ve come for my throne.”

Smoke washes over Sam’s soul as Azazel melts away, ashes crashing to the ground like shattered ice. Hell holds its breath for a moment, feels a wind of change clanging through the dank and fleshy halls. Power has changed hands. Blood has been spilt.

The King has been challenged and has been found… wanting.

* * *

In a cage, in the deepest of pits, an angel traces frosty bars as he listens to the hell-song that surrounds him. The being is made of inexorable light, silvery-black wings confined by the terrible cage, one of its heads– the snake – cocks to the side with a dash of its tongue.

The devil smiles as he feels hell warm up, sees the ice around him melt with a great, raging heat.

His vessel has returned.

* * *

Sam knows there are plans for him. General to a demon army, vessel to an angel. The demons want hell on earth and heaven in hell. More than anything, though, they just need to be led.

And Sam has his own plans, plans that will crack this place open like a melon on a hot summer’s day. It’s time to laud in a new era for Hell, one that’s never going to end. Demons surround him: black, twisted, tortured souls.

As Sam stands before the throne they sing.

“Let us rejoice, the King is dead. Long live the king.”

_Dynasty decapitated, you just might see a ghost tonight (Emperor’s New Clothes by Panic! At The Disco)_

_I swear I can see how a man can go crazy when he’s told he’s free. (Train; Will and the People)_

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspiration: 'Train' by Will and the People  
> Two of the quotes at the beginning and end of the story are from 'Emperor's New Clothes' by Panic! at the Disco. Go listen to it because it is great and entirely the vibe I was feeling when writing all of this. 
> 
> Also, I obviously used the Teen Wolf version of a kitsune in this story instead of the official supernatural version. 
> 
> Anyway, please let me know if you enjoyed it!


End file.
